HOW INNOCENT AMERICANS PAY FOR ZIONIST WAR CRIMES

From Wednesday, May 17, 2006

A Bright Movie*

The saris go by me from the embassies.
-The Woman at the Washington Zoo
by Randall Jarrell

Beirut is a city of gold and fatique -Mahmoud Darwish

Whilst gadding about and on the way back
this long story started to end as it should
in the middle. Stopped on a corner,
the same one-legged old man there
sitting on the curb. In a country like this
no one has a sign: Will Work For Food
because that would be just too
crowded. It used to be that he'd stand
on his leg in the middle of the road
to collect alms for himself
but now times are tough he has to wait
to be called over. Not like the guy
in the wheelchair on the East Side who gets
onto the macadam between twelve
chaotic lanes, God Only Knows How
(probably dropped off by a taxi, must be).
Not like the kid up by the Phoenicia
whose hands were burnt clean off,
who smiles and earns so much for that smile.
His job is easy. But a one-legged man
has a different problem in a bad economy.
Standing on one leg for hours isn't what you'd call

without problems. You don't do it for nothing.

So I stopped and called him over.
I'd passed by him at least five times in three months
to avoid pissing off the guy in the rear view mirror.
This time though I called him over to hand him a fiver.
Five times one thousand equals roughly five thousand.
It was good and I noticed the girl behind me
doing the same, dragging coins out of the purse
that must have been in her lap. It felt good.
I knew that if I hadn't stopped she wouldn't have either.
I lost her near the airport tunnel. You know
how it is in the subterranean tunnel that
goes right under the Hariri International tarmac.
I was just about to enter when I saw everyone
coming out the other way, HCE. Turn around.
Lucky today it seems because once you get in
that tunnel and there is an accident, you
are in there. Full of exhaust and exhaustion,
pushing and shoving until two lanes turn into four.
You smoke three cigarettes that you didn't need.
You get tired of listening to the Eagles sing
on a corner in Winslow Arizona ONE MORE TIME.
You get out and head back up the wrong way
on an exit ramp but that's okay, in Lebanon
everyone knows what you're doing. They
would do the same. Like yesterday's fender
bender in the Ouzai. Not paying attention
and wham! Right into the back of a taxi.
The driver gets out and he's mad. I'm ready
to fight it, to say he is a taxi driver and a cheat.
I'm ready to do that when a thirty kg kid squeezes
between me and the city bus.

"What are you doing there kid? Move away,
you are going to get hit." He was just trying
to help. In Lebanon the kids settle disasters
too, they've seen so much and damn if they
don't have the audacity to tell you how to
handle a fender bender. The boy did what I
told him to do and seemed rather pleased
that I'd thought enough of him to tell him
to get out from between me and the bus.

The taxi driver is there at my window.
I just ask him, instead of fighting it all,
"What do you want from me? Is twenty
bucks okay?" Sure is. I know once I drive
away he would have settled for ten and he
knows too, he could have asked for thirty.
A deal is a deal though and we drive away
pleased. Some poor man leans in my window
and says, "Hamdu'la sah'lahme" which to me
sounds an awful lot like Thanks for the salami.
But it means, Thank God you weren't hurt.
I agree and the man reminds me, "Haram, he is
a taxi driver." Means that twenty bucks is like
thirty customers and worth a bit of bent chrome.

I left the scene of the accident feeling pretty good.
Today as I avoided the tunnel wondering
about the bodies that might have been there,
the ones I could have seen had I had the time
for the Eagles and three more cancer sticks,
I cruised through the old airport road that starts
right by Fadallah's Mobil station, a station
that gives everything to orphans
(reminded myself to go there next time to buy gas) .
I saw the following:

carcasses of sheeps and goats and cows
still bleeding into the gutters plastic balls
in net bags voluptuous Shia girls some
covered and some not taxis stopping every
few meters letting out little old men and haggard
old women muffler shops and bread stores until
finally I saw what it was I was after. A sign that read:

The School of Opulent Knowledge,
a little run down and right on time.

**This poem suffered under a horrible name. This weekend while in South Lebanon I watched the movie Syriana with old what's his name...from Ocean's Seven....and boy! What a bunch of plotless bullshit. And the parts about Beirut...so out of context. Since the movie takes place now...post 9/11 and in the Era of so-called "Oil Wars" how is it that in Beirut the stage is set with Freedom Fighters on buildings with machine guns? Now...back in the early to mid eighties there were a few of those but mid to late 90's? Nope. But that is the point of propaganda......to make you confused. Never was there a more beautiful depiction of confusion. But the great part is the hero (in the end) just goes home like Bilbo Baggins with some kind of 'knowledge' ring...you, the movie going public are supposed to believe and that knowledge is that there is no POINT to these things that people do in the Middle East to each other. It's just sort of a crazy game played by oil tycoons. Like Steven STEALBERG (Terminal starring Tom Hanks) who stole a movie plot from a REAL IRANIAN who REALLY WAS stranded in CDG AIRPORT for NINE YEARS and isntead, made the main character into one from a 'fictionalized' EASTERN BLOCK country, er, like the kind of people who have "returned" to the Promised Land called IsUNreal which is labelied by the Iranian president a "Fictional State" imposed by the Zionists on the Palestinians and the world (US contributes 4B USD every year to the Zionist regime and has been doing so for a very long time folks) and hence, justifies absolutely his motto of driving the Zionists into the sea. Well, Steven Stealberg is another case in point and donated a whole bunch of money LAST WEEK to the war criminals in order to protect his own fictions. Wow. BOYCOTT HIM. BOYCOTT LIARS THAT CONTRIBUTE MONEY TO DELIVER CLUSTER BOMBS TO THE NEEDY AND USE YOUR TICKET PRICES TO DO SO.

Was ZIONISM mentioned in the plot of the movie called Syriana? Oh sure...I guess you could call it that "protocols of zion" type of thing and they flash on some old newsreel of the Rockafellers.....right in the beginning. And that's it. Nary a mention of the single most IMPORTANT cause of the crisis in the MIDDLE EAST. Just like the politically non savvy and flabby poets at Silliman in their former discussions of the ME conflicts...those old spittle busting conversations in which flabby poets share amylase with the rest of the blathering that goes on in the Language School and elsewhere.

A type of racism and bigotry and all out HATRED of a large number of people called:

ZIONISM. There you have it. And yes...see the movie. It is worth a scratch on the head and perhaps one in the crotch. (You know Arab men are always scratching their crotches and thank the Lord this is never portrayed in movies...God only knows what devastation that might provoke in the 'civilized' nations...you know the ones...like American that support Zionism and Christian Zionism to the tune of several billions of dollars yearly).

Addendum: Shi'ism is the MIDDLE ROAD of Islamic Politics. The Shi'i have supported Bush's war on terror by handing over several Osama type folks from the region involved in the US Occupation, Iraq. What has baffled some is that the Shi'i could support such a man. Well, it is because the Shi'i are OBLIGATED to avoid things that split Islam like those involved in the WTC which divided not only Islam but divided the people of the United States into two diametrically opposed groups. Those that HATE BUSH and those that don't. Now though, it is a further 'sorting' of those who not only hate Bush but admire the Middle Road of Shi'i politics and the actual putting ones' money where ones' mouth is i.e. fighting and dying for one's country or one's conviction that hypocrisy and oppression are ALWAYS bad, regardless of the color of one's skin or one's passport or one's religion. And yet, there are still those who KNOW the truth of this story but fail to stand up for justice. They still bow to an imposed ideology that has used the Jewish religion to promote hatred of Muslims.

It is funny to watch the media now turn on its back again and do things like label the Gulf States as moderates. They were never moderates. They were simply Kings in love with their thrones and in love with American briberies. Not Hezbollah though. Hezbollah leader Nasrallah has vowed to pay the rent of every homeless victim of Israeli Brutality for a FULL YEAR. The Iranian president, a former commander of the army in the Iran/Iraq war (a war promoted by the US(who sponsored the terrorist Saddam Hussein)/funded by Saudi/Israel selling weapons to the Iranians) who holds a PhD....has also vowed his support. Not to the Zionists though and for this, he is made into a new dragon. These idiots who work hand in hand to deliver cluster bombs to 'the needy' specialize in creating dragons which they can in turn, slay for the American Populace. Amusing to hear about the slaying of a high ranking commander of Hezbollah a short time before the 'cease fire' and watch how the media couldn't drum up anything other than a 'so what' because they were unable to label the dragon before they slew him. That is because he wasn't a dragon, he was a dragon slayer. The real kind. An honorable resistance fighter of south Lebanon.

And please note, Sayyed Nasrallah already lost ONE SON to Zionist brutality while fighting the illegal occupation of Southern Lebanon by the Zionists almost a decade ago. And this time, during this latest Zionist brutality, his other son was....you know where? FIGHTING for the Freedom of Lebanon from Israeli/US/Zionist oppression. In the trenches. Don't find many leaders who will put their own sons in the line of fire now do you? Think again about those dragons. And don't ask me to apologize to the dragon makers...they are just illusionists.